


Graduation Speech

by Leni



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen, Post-Chosen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-24 22:12:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4937230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leni/pseuds/Leni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>post-Chosen. Comics, what comics?</p><p>
  <i>It was the last day of their basic training </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Graduation Speech

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tigriswolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigriswolf/gifts).



> Written for Tigriswolf at [Comment Fic](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/658432.html?thread=88311296#t88311296). Prompt: **Here is what they'll never tell you: it doesn't hurt, come the end.**

It was the last day of their basic training 

After the six months spent in close quarters, all the young women in the room were at least known to each other. There were even a few deep friendships already in place, and instead of their bonds being tested through the end of the world and death (and worse), they only needed to fear that time and distance would make them drift apart.

"Will you come back here?" one brunette asked the girl at her side.

She got a head shake in answer.

Most of them would fly back home in the morning. They had been taught to recognize the signs of trouble, but there were only five active hellmouths and dozens of them. Unless the undead decided to swarm to the surface, or the demons escalated their activity, there was no need for all of them to patrol the streets nightly.

There was already a good number of girls who'd been raised in the expectation of stepping onto the battlefield, and most of them didn't know, or hadn't adapted to, the idea of life without following their Calling.

That same Calling had come too late for the girls in the room. If the world was in danger, yes, they'd join the fight. But until then they would rather rejoin their normal lives. There were college classes to return to, and jobs to pick up from where they'd been left. A few even had a kid they couldn't wait to see again, and the luckier ones had families and loved ones ready to carve their stakes and keep them stocked with holy water just in case they did run into a nest of vampires.

The first lesson to be learned in London had been that no Slayer could stand alone against the darkness and expect to live long.

There were hundreds of depressing accounts about the girls before them to prove that fact.

Then there was the woman who'd changed all the rules.

"Is it true?" One of the younger girls asked, stars in her eyes. "Summers will come tonight?"

They were all between eighteen and twenty five years old. But there was no limit in age for a strong case of hero-worship.

Several nodded, and one added, "She always shows up for this, I've heard."

Most of them had resented Buffy Summers' unilateral decision to spread the Slayer's power to all with the potential to receive it. They'd quickly changed their mind after hearing the accounts about those last days in California's hellmouth from the girls who had survived it.

The world kept turning because there had been more than one Slayer - more than _two_ , even - to take up arms and fight an army from hell. 

Bringing in dozens of unsuspecting girls at the same time was a desperate action worth their forgiveness, they'd decided after a few weeks here.

They were all between eighteen and twenty-five years old.

"Hush!" That same girl as before said, obviously excited. "She's here!"

Indeed, the door opened and a blond woman in her late twenties stepped in, followed by the Slayer who supervised their training. They knew Faith's story, told by the woman herself a few weeks into their stay here. It was respect that made them stand a little straighter as Faith Lehane walked by them, but their curiosity was held by the other woman.

Where Faith had conquered the temptation to give into her darker urges (something they could all understand, since it was so easy to think of themselves as above the law now), Buffy had fought on a hellmouth for years, and in the final battle she had led the army that had been left standing.

They were familiar with Faith.

Summers was almost a figure of myth.

She was rarely seen in headquarters, as she led the group of Slayers who'd already been trained by the old Council and who could stand on their feet in any fight. Only a few of the girls in Basic had met Buffy Summers in person, and none could boast of a lengthy interview with her.

But they all waited in silence is Buffy made her way to the front of the room.

"Good evening, ladies," she started, looking fondly at the lot of them. "I am not about to call this a graduation ceremony, for reasons none of you is unlucky enough to understand-" There was a pause as Faith gave a soft snort, and she smiled wryly. "All right, only _one_ of you." 

The two Slayers exchanged a look, a hint of wariness before it was swept away by amusement, and the moment passed.

Buffy Summers resumed her speech. "I am glad that you accepted our invitation to join us for this semester, and I'm confident that you're aware and comfortable with your new strengths now - and that our resident handyman is glad for it." There were a few rueful chuckles as some of them remembered crushed appliances and dented doorjambs. It was the reason most of them had come: to learn control. "You need to know what you can do, before you understand who you are now - and who is that?"

The same word crossed their minds: _Myself_.

It had been drilled into them from their first day in. That they were still the same person they'd been before a spell had awakened dormant powers. That the world hadn't changed, even if it could feel like it had turned upside down overnight, and that it was still up to them to choose how they lived in it.

Summers nodded as if they had answered out loud.

"You know that you're not alone. You may think that this is not important. Perhaps you think of the girls like us, who fought and died in anonymity for too long, and pity them for dying in a battle they never could have won on their own. But here's something nobody has ever told you: dying is easy." She spoke louder over the general gasp. "It's the living who suffer, but the one who is gone is beyond that. There is no pain, when the end comes, and afterwards... well, heaven is as good a description as any, I figure."

That garnered a roomful of confused glances. At one time or the other, they had heard the rumors about Summers, but too much had happened while only she and her close circle of friends were present at that hellmouth. Sje spoke as if from experience, but surely those tales of fighting a god and being brought back from the dead afterwards were just exaggeration... weren't they?

"If you must pity the girls who fell," Summers continued, all gravity now, "grieve for the _lives_ they didn't have, not the death they did."

These words were met with slow understanding.

"And on that bright note-" and the sarcasm was softened with a chuckle "-I'll remind you that we are here for you. Never hesitate to contact us, no matter the time, no matter how paranoid you think you're being. Evil wears many faces, so you must trust your instinct if it tells you there's something wrong.

You are _not_ alone. So don't be foolish enough to act as if you were."

One voice spoke up in the back of the room. "And if it's an emergency?"

"Then do as you must, but call for reinforcements first."

"And don't die," Faith added.

Nervous laughter broke at that.

Buffy smiled too. "She is right," she told them. "Remember to make the hard choice. If it comes to a decision between pain and death, choose the pain. We'll be there to make it better afterwards, trust that."

 _Trust me,_ they all heard.

And eventually, some with more ease than others, they all nodded at that.

That woman had saved the world against monsters none could imagine despite the horrible descriptions they'd heard.

Why shouldn't she save them too, if it came to that?

 

The End  
05/10/15


End file.
